Central policies reduced Punjab to position of 'beggar': Badal

Listing the achievements of the state government in the key areas of power, infrastructure, health and education, chief minister Parkash Singh Badal emphasized the need for continuity of his government for another term of five years in order to sustain the tempo of overall development.

indiaUpdated: Nov 18, 2011 19:37 IST

HT Correspondent None

Listing the achievements of the state government in the key areas of power, infrastructure, health and education, chief minister Parkash Singh Badal emphasized the need for continuity of his government for another term of five years in order to sustain the tempo of overall development.

"The unprecedented development carried out by the SAD-BJP alliance during the present tenure was beyond comparison and none of the Congress governments in the state had achieved such a degree of development and all round progress", Badal said while addressing a rally on Friday after laying the foundation stone of a high level bridge over river Satluj to be built at a cost of Rs 102 crore in this border village which will shorten the distance to Ferozepur.

Lashing out at the Congress governments or Congress led governments, he said that it had always ignored Punjab in the allocation of funds and schemes by devising stringent norms to deliberately exclude the state from developmental schemes. Besides the Congress never stops in meddling in the religious affairs of Sikhs, he added.

"The Centre’s gross discrimination and apathetic attitude towards Punjab had virtually reduced our position to that of being beggars. Unemployment, illiteracy, poverty and inflation had enormously affected the life of the common man", he added.

He expressed the hope that the awakened electorates of the state would once teach a lesson to the Congress party in the coming assembly elections. He further said that anti- Congress wave witnessed in the Hisar Lok Sabha polls would be repeated in the coming assembly elections in Punjab.

Badal has dared union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee to act swiftly to bring back to the country the millions stashed in foreign banks as his ministry had in its possession valuable information on the black money in banks abroad. He said that the SAD-BJP government had been demanding that the Congress led UPA government immediately bring back the ill gotten money hidden in the foreign banks so that it could be judiciously utilized for funding welfare schemes for millions of poor across the country. The chief minister said their MLA’s and MPs had been persuading the central government time and again to retrieve the undisclosed amounts kept abroad, but the Central government had so far paid no heed to their demand.

“If the Centre does not initiate any action in this regard promptly, our MPs will be forced to take up this matter in the forthcoming winter session of the Parliament to seek its intervention in the larger public interest”, he added.

On the occasion, the chief minister announced to set an ultra modern silo at a cost of Rs 100 crore at Patti for the storage of food grains. He also announced that Patti-Khemkaran road would be widened and strengthened soon at a cost of Rs. 5 crore.